As anyone who is or knows an author knows, many of us frequently go
around wishing and hoping that our book will receive reviews on that
book giant, Amazon. (I also wish and hope for Powell’s and Barnes and
Noble’s but as more and more authors publish exclusively through the Big
A, that’s what this blog post is about.) I thought that I’d explain my
own reasons for wanting reviews and how they work. I’m choosing to
address this via questions that I’ve received from friends and family.

1) I’m no good at writing an Amazon review. What do I say?

The beautiful thing about Amazon reviews is that you don’t have to be
Roger Ebert. You can click a star rating and then write a couple of
sentences about the book. Reviews can be as simple as “This book was
really good. I wish there was more romance” or really elaborate.

Here are some things you could put in a review:

Adjectives that describe the book (it was good, it was awful, etc).

Say something you liked about it. Things that you could focus on
could include the plot, a particular scene, characters, how things
changed during the course of the story, etc.

If there was a moment or character that personally impacted you in
some way, don’t be afraid to say so. Put yourself in the review. Authors
love to know their readers and I know that I’m always touched when I
can tell someone made a personal connection with what I wrote.

Talk about what you wanted to see more of or what needs improvement.
Do you wish another character was in the book more? Say so. Did bad
spelling distract you? Tell us that too.

Tips to remember:

Don’t be afraid to be honest. Do, however, remember to be helpful. Don’t just say “it sucks” but tell everyone why it sucked.

Don’t give away the ending of the book. You can allude to it very
vaguely (“the ending surprised me”) but don’t say specific plot details.

You’re not being graded. Write a review as long or short as you
want. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece of art—think of it more as a
conversation or what you might tell people you know about this book.

Make sure that you read the book before you review. This seems like it should be obvious but… it’s not.

2) Do Amazon reviews actually affect a book’s sales?

I have to be honest with you and tell you that I don’t yet know for
sure as I don’t have the “magic number” yet. This is what I understand
to be true from conversations with my publisher and other authors:

Around 20-25 reviews, Amazon starts including the book in “also
bought” and “you might like” lists. This increases your chances of
someone finding your title.

Around 50-70 reviews, Amazon looks at your book for spotlight
positions and the newsletter. This is HUGE. This is my personal goal
although I use Amazon reviews for other reasons (more later on in this
post).

Number of reviews may affect Amazon sales ranking. (Again, this is anecdotal–I have no actual proof of it.)

Some websites will not consider or promote your book unless you have
a number of reviews on the page (this is very true of those sites that
highlight free promos—I can attest to this).

And, of course, readers may read through your reviews and decide to purchase or not purchase the book based on this.

3) Whatever. I don’t care if you sell this wonderful/awful
book. Why should I write a review if it doesn’t change how you write the
next one?

Oh, but it does.

When I read my Amazon reviews, they tell me things that my editor
might not. Let’s face it, an editor is only one person and even with
beta readers, you’re working in a group of people who are familiar with
the craft of writing. What an author also needs is the opinion of the
average reader, that person who just picked up their book and doesn’t
have an English degree.

While you have to have a tough skin about reviews, as an author,
they’re very helpful. They can reaffirm something that you were already
working on. For instance, I’d already decided to make one of my minor
characters in my first book a point-of-view character for the second—my
reviews have told me that people wouldn’t be uninterested in him. They
can also point out things that you need to work on. In my case,
exposition!

Likewise, positive reviews tell you what you’re doing right. If
people rave about your characters, then that’s likely a good place to
keep going. If reviews talk about the fighting scenes in a positive
light, then you know you’re making a difference.

So, in short, yes, what you write in that review is fairly likely to
change something about the book I’m working on now. Writing is a
process.

4) But I really hated the book! Should I still review it?

Here is where I probably differ from some other authors so I’m going to speak only for myself here.

Yes. Absolutely. How will I know where to improve unless I get
reviews that tell me so? Yes, it can be painful to read some reviews but
am I ever going to say that there isn’t truth in them? No.
After the initial sting, I’ll read it again and take something home from
that. I’ll be a better writer for it. To be honest, not everyone likes
every book. There are people out there who hate Harry Potter.
It would be a little presumptuous to think that all of my reviews would
be golden for any book (they’re not now and I don’t expect that to
change. Especially not if anyone reads this post. ).

The only thing that I ask is to please make sure you have something
to say about why it is bad. The only review that I’ve ever been really
irritable about was a one-star on an old short horror story I posted for
fun where the reader said they were underage and hadn’t read it.

Having said all of that, it is really tough to be a small press or
self-published author (I am the former). Bad reviews can kill a novel if
they’re the first ones a book receives or if they’re all that the book
has. Please hold this in mind if you decide to go forth. This post by Anne R. Allen does a good job of explaining the impact in more detail than I’ll get into here.

Now that you’ve read all of that, if you have any questions, feel
free to comment and I’ll try to answer them. I am speaking from an
author’s standpoint but perhaps others will chime in with their own
thoughts on the process.

(Feel free to share this post or copy it for your own blog. All I ask
is that if you do, please keep my author note here at the bottom.)

Gwen Perkins is a fantasy novelist who is always on the hunt for Amazon reviews for her first novel, The Universal Mirror (Hydra Publications, 2012). She can be contacted through email at gwen@ironangel.net.